<p>Is their current strategy working? </p>
<p>What are your suggestions on how adcoms can convincingly encourage applicants to relax a little?</p>
<p>You’d have to get them to want to do it, first. Hey, it’s not that they don’t want more predictable yields. They do. But for the really elite colleges, the frenzy plays into their hands very well. They’re not going to change a practice that tends to increase the perceived value of their degrees.</p>
<p>And they’re CERTAINLY not going to disarm unilaterally.</p>
<p>Why should they subdue it? They are delighted to have a product that people are frenetic about getting.</p>
<p>Anyway, the adcoms know that things will change around 2013 when the numbers of U.S. college-bound students starts decreasing. That’s what concerns them; not an overabundance of excellent, enthusiastic applicants.</p>
<p>I think NSM is close to the truth. There is one more problem: antitrust. The ivies and MIT used to collaborate in fixing financial aid offers so as to avoid price competition among themselves. This helped to reduce the frenzy, of course, but at some cost to students themselves, and to clear advantage to the colleges. The feds held this practice to be an antitrust violation.</p>
<p>So, to fix the frenzy, even assuming they wanted to, which I don’t believe, would take some agreement among colleges that would likely be challenged on antitrust grounds. Instead, colleges use signalling (much like airlines in price increases) like Harvard’s recent announcement that it will drop SCEA next year. Since few followed, that will probably go the way of other experiments, like their prior effort at moving SCEA to EA.</p>
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<p>If the frenzy is not due to any criteria as such, but the sheer odds of getting into a relatively good school, perhaps there is nothing to be done.</p>
<p>Else, it seems rather simple. Look at what admissions criteria are causing the frenzy and perhaps relax them a bit. If the ‘frenzy’ is people trying to rack up EC’s, then colleges would have to give them less weight. You won’t get all the other applicants in America to relax, so it has to occur with admissions. Or, if ‘packaging’ works, make it so that doesn’t. (I’m saying what * can * be done, not necessarily what * should * be done, to stem the frenzy.)</p>
<p>Given that, unilateral action is not improbable - the university is not losing but changing the composition of its students.</p>
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What cause of the frenzy would necessitate collusion?</p>
<p>In fairness, I think that adcoms are often deeply ambivalent. Of course they’re delighted at how things are playing out on an institutional level, with more and brighter students seeking admission to their schools. And of course they want to see their application and yield numbers rise.</p>
<p>But I also think that many, maybe most admissions professionals at selective schools care about the tensions that the current climate creates at an individual level. Some of the most thoughtful critics of rankings, for example, have been officials at institutions who benefit the most from them. We’ve had admissions counselors from MIT on CC threads this week telling students that they don’t consider the difference between a 2250 and 2400 on the SAT meaningful. ED may be alive and well, but more and more institutions are deemphasizing standardized tests or going SAT-optional (and most not primarily in order to boost their mean reported SAT scores). </p>
<p>Anecdotal evidence from yesterday’s mail: I got an alumni magazine from one of the schools that was recently named a “New Ivy.” It contained a thoughtful piece from the college president; rather than trumpeting the rating, it essentially told alumns not to put much stock in such ratings, rankings, and accolades and to focus on real measures of educational quality (faculty, programs, facilities et al.)</p>
<p>Admissions officers are trying, but MarathonMan is right. They’re ambivalent, and they’re only human. Look at the situation with Asian Americans…admissions officers are trying to discourage applicants they perceive to be drones without personality, people whom they believe to have a one-track mind (hardworking, wants to get into the best college not out of intellectualism but out of desire for success).
The adcoms might be wrong (they probably are) in their judgement of Asian Americans but you can see that they’re at least thinking in the right direction in trying to discourage tunnel vision. Now we just need them to expand their criteria to all races–looking for well balanced, not well rounded students. Well balanced implies a good mix of personal qualities/achievements/commitment and academic achievement. Well rounded implies that the student has rounded all the bases, so to speak (ie, done every activity on the checklist).</p>
<p>Majorly increase tuition. They are doing that anyway, but by doing it slowly, they actually increase desirability of the services they are selling.</p>
<p>The reality is that there is no admissions frenzy except at, maybe, 150 schools. There are 1600 four-year colleges in the country, some of them really, really excellent, often with large endowments, that will pretty much take close to any warm body who will pay the bill.</p>
<p>*Why should they subdue it? They are delighted to have a product that people are frenetic about getting.</p>
<p>Anyway, the adcoms know that things will change around 2013 when the numbers of U.S. college-bound students starts decreasing. That’s what concerns them; not an overabundance of excellent, enthusiastic applicants.*
Exactly
They * like it*</p>
<p>My kids weren’t frentic
- the opposite in fact & I find that in general- kids mimic their parents issues more than we realize.
A girl who is obsessed with her looks often has a mother or father obsessed with appearance, a boy who feels that he has to attend the most competitive college in the country or his academic career is for naught, has probably been given ammo for that opinion since he was in 5th grade.</p>
<p>Neither one of my kids seems particulary competitve ( academically) my D was happy to attend Reed & at the time Reed had a much higher admittance rate- but we were able to recognize that it was self selection, not a comment on the education.</p>
<p>I do see students who are much more concerned about how the name of their college is perceived, and have difficulty finding other schools that offer a similar experience without the competition & I admit that those students often do fall into the stereotypical cultural backgrounds- 1st generation- Americans for example.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say that the international & 1st gen ( high school) students I have met are drones without personality, but it isn’t unusual for them to be more concerned with how a teacher grades, than what they can learn in the class , which is a shame because they are missing out on some great teachers that way.
But I think that is just a lack of exposure to the variety of colleges that are out there-and once they learn that they can find one that is really a great fit, not just a “name” they have many more choices</p>
<p>What can Sony do to subdue the frenzy over PS3?</p>
<p>adcoms could publish complete statistics on their admissions. I think we’d see that the admissions process is more grade and SAT driven than we have been led to believe.</p>
<p>“What can Sony do to subdue the frenzy over PS3?”</p>
<p>I think that’s the right answer. They work for the universities, not the applicants. It’s the job of parents and schools to get their priorities in order and set a good example for the kids.</p>